How I Organise My Life Using Notion: In the AI Era!

0:00This video is sponsored [music] by Skillshare. Hey, it's Simon. Here we are again, my friends. Today, I'm going to show you what my new Notion operating system actually looks like for the agentic era. Exactly what's changed in this Life OS version and why it's properly built for the AI [music] era. Including updates from the best new Notion features and how it now plugs in to a [music] brand new AI and skills

0:24hub. A Notion Life OS is a personal operating system to organize your life, which now is so much easier to use and on board with now that we have Notion's [music] personal agent in chat. And I've updated my template to pick up on all the feedback [music] over the last year or so from you lot. So, this genuinely is ready for how we work now, which is changing [music] fast. So, whether you use AI or not, this should help. So, Notion [music] ships changes and new features fast. And conversely, I try to ship an updated version of my big [music] Notion OS templates a little slower. I want to judge when the right

1:04moment is to make sure the most important features are actually used well. And so, it's been a little while since I shared this. So, there's a little section in a moment for you regular users [music] of this stuff for what's going on here. But if you're new, this is a great time to get involved with Notion and employing it with all these new AI tools. So, I'm going to give you a tour of all the updates [music] across this system that I have made. It's a new look template. I'm not 100% sure on the cover just yet, but let

1:32me know what you think in the comments. I've divided the video into sections in the timeline, so you can [music] skip to what matters most to you. I do recommend just grabbing a brew and following along. We're going to cover what Life OS actually is and who it's for, what's new and what's changed, [music] a walk-through of the whole system organized around my packed layout that is about planning, actioning, capturing information, and tracking where you're going. [music] And I'll show you how the new agent and skills

2:00features fit into it all. [music] Now, if you're an existing user of my Notion Life OS or complete Life OS bundle, a couple of things on the updates that I'm sharing here. Feel free to skip to the next section if you're not one of those existing users. So, for complete Life OS bundle users, we have actually not updated the additional CRM content and client management systems in the Agentic Life OS. And that is for one very good reason. We're actually addressing those in a far more radical rebuild for a new template that is going to be the Agentic Business OS. Now, we thought long and hard about this, and

2:38this is a significant new build with much more advanced client portals, simpler interface, personal and team dashboards for a multiple people using it, and everything is optimized for bringing your Agentic life into it. Your contacts, your agents. And it's going to be the basis of a new cohort that I'll be launching this year around adopting AI for your work. So, all of you existing bundle users, you can access this Agentic Life OS version now, but we haven't built it with the content and CRM section in it. So, you do have the option of taking that and connecting it to this one, or hold out and we'll share

3:14a discounted access to the new Agentic Business OS when that's ready very soon. I'll be sharing all that information on the Systems Made Better channel, my new second channel. Subscribe below if you haven't, and it's linked here. And I've shared in the description if you're an existing Life OS user on the best way to approach adopting a new template because moving your data across isn't always good. Maybe it's better to download this and ask a Notion agent to adopt some of the new changes and add them to your

3:40system. So, if you're new here, Life OS is a complete personal operating system I've built for Notion. One place to manage your tasks and projects, your goals and planning, your knowledge base, ideas, contacts, and somewhere you can track habits, subscriptions, workouts, whatever you want. I've built something that gives you everything that you can then customize to your needs. You can even journal in here with specific, carefully made prompted templates that will help you in the process. It offers insights on your progress and buttons to enable quick actions, quick capture, and of course, all of it integrates with your personal agent, so you're able to fill it out and use it far more easily

4:26than you used to be able to. Now, the whole system is built around the second brain concept, originally coined by David Allen and later taken a bit further but by Tiago Forte and his PARA method and the concept of building out a second brain. I build mine with a set of master databases, master dashboards, and then a main command center where you can find what you need quickly and easily and work through it. The idea of a second brain is really simple. We get

4:55overwhelmed by the information we hold. By having one digital place that you trust to hold all of your ideas, notes, and everything and then feed them back to you when and where you need them, you can then let go of holding it, have a clearer mind, and focus on what matters. It lets you get on with the important stuff while you trust a system to

5:14surface what you need right back to you. That's why we have things like a tasks and action view that can show you tasks that are coming up, projects that you're working on, and easy ways for you to quickly focus on parts of your life, such as being able to quickly jump into your life areas dashboard and see absolutely everything you need in one place and then be able to focus on one

5:37part of your life at once, much clearer. So, everything is organized around what I call PACKED. That is to plan, calendar, goal setting, yearly planning, a PARA dashboard based on Tiago's system to quickly see what you're doing, action where you run your tasks, your projects, capture where you can quickly insert AI meeting notes into a new meeting notes management system, contacts and knowledge, and we've even got a new tag system that works across links to all the other databases meaning that you can easily link and make connections between things. And finally, track. This is a place to log workouts in our workouts tracker, set up habits and track them on a daily

6:23log. And we've even built in a new time sheet section which allows you to track your time per task and across a project. So, if you're working with clients or just want to know where your time goes, you're able to see it. And yes, this is a template. The whole system is downloadable as a Notion template on the marketplace. So, if you want a shortcut to having this ready to go, you can grab it. I've done all the early work for you so you can put your energy into adopting it, tweaking it to your needs, and making things happen. You can find it at bettercreating.com/lifeos, and make sure you're signed up to the

6:57mailing list as we're going to be sharing a bunch of new community features and training on using this stuff quite soon. And a full onboarding video series already exists which I'll link in the description below if you want to see it in the slightly older version of this. Same idea. Gives you the principles. Next, I want to show you what's new and what's changed and why this is so focused on being an agentic system. But first, well, the thing about building a system like this is that you can have the most beautifully organized operating system in the world, but if your habits don't support it, then it's

7:29just a pretty dashboard gathering dust that you never use. Because the truth is, a digital organization system like this is only as good as how you actually approach it. And that part is never a tech problem. It's a human one. So, showing up consistently, even when motivation dips, meaningful behavior change is something no AI tool or automation is going to solve for you, which is where I've been loving

7:54Skillshare recently, today's sponsor. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is step away from a system and learn from an actual human who's already figured this stuff out, right? So, I recently took a class called The 28-Day Project by Rich Armstrong on Skillshare, and I really rated it. It's a beautifully simple framework for beating procrastination and building daily creative habits. Just one small step a day for 28 days. No fancy setup, just pick one thing that matters, show up for 5 minutes, and build the momentum. I love how it pairs so well with everything I'm showing you today. So, if a Life OS in Notion gives you structure,

8:29Rich's class gives you the mindset, that daily rhythm and gentle accountability that actually makes the system work. And if you want to stick with me, you'll also find my class for adopting part-time productivity is there, too. Skillshare is an online learning platform with thousands of classes like this, taught by people who actually do this stuff for a living, illustration, design, productivity, creativity, whatever you want to get better at. The first 500 people to use my link in the description or scan this QR code will get a 1-month free trial of Skillshare, so just try it. You've got nothing to

9:01lose. So, compared to my original Notion Life OS, which does look a little different, what's changed under the hood and what have we added [music] to create a much more powerful and simple to use system, particularly given these new AI features with Notion Agent? I'll walk you through the main changes, and then we'll do a quick tour of anything we missed. So, first of all, this simplified home page navigation. I decided that this was a much cleaner way to use the system, and it also helps us think about what we're doing. Are we taking action? Are we capturing? Are we tracking things? Whilst it's hides things away, I think this helps us be

9:42more focused. I really love it. Really what you're looking at here is a set of dashboards, and we still have on the left a full navigation system, which easily takes you back to home as you need it. And for those who want to get under the hood for each of these views, the database views created here are just

9:57linked views of a source database. Meaning, if you don't want all of them, you can delete them. But, we have also simplified this a So, there's less for you to choose from, and it's easier for you to use it. By far the coolest new feature that my colleague Jacob has added is this simple command center. What this database item does is it draws in information from all of your key databases and gives you a weekly pulse, an overview of what's happened in the last 7 days, what you've done, and where something needs attention. He's a total wiz. I've now got help, and it's meaning that this

10:33system is getting far better, and far quicker. So, yeah, thanks to Jacob for this and a load of other stuff he's done on the system. You can take a look at it here. It's basically a single view. It's locked. Just treat this as a reporting view. You don't do anything with it, and it gives you a great snapshot. We've also got quick capture buttons here for the key items that you might want to add, and they of course exist wherever else you want to be working. So, new goal is on the goal setting system. Now, this is supported by the perspectives view that has been significantly refined since

11:04last time I built this. It's a dashboard using Notion charts. So, you can see a pattern across your system at a glance. It works right through all of the key databases, and shows you reports on them. So, clips and references. Nice. Now, we did save the full Notion dashboards feature for the larger Agentic Business OS, since both require users to be on a business plan to get those features enabled. But, you could easily add a dashboards feature if you wanted an even cleaner view than this in Life OS. Next up is going to be database consolidation. We slimmed down the views on the system pages. So, what I mean by

11:44that is let's take a look at our say tomorrow today top of mind for task lists. We've got a different set of views in here, right? Tomorrow's tasks you can look at top of mind tasks today and overdue. There's a priority board. They used to be loads and loads of views here. We wanted to give you everything and I think that was overwhelming. We've now

12:04added what we think most people need. But, what's great about Life OS is if you don't like them you can delete them without worrying about them going forever and you can always add a new view just by clicking new view, selecting anything here, clicking the tasks database view, and you will then see the options that you can pick from if you want to create something different and there are a lot. So, we've given you that flexibility hopefully without overwhelming you. The other thing we've done is split the knowledge base into internal and external notes removing the old notebooks database. For those of you that are new here, what

12:42that really means is that it's much clearer about where stuff goes. AI meeting notes, which we'll talk about in a little bit, have transformed how we use Notion and so when we create a new meeting note it will add the meeting note transcription system in there and what's really lovely is then we have a single place for all of those conversations that you have in meeting notes, but then we also have the knowledge base, which is a place where you collect clippings, external knowledge, references and notes that

13:11come from externally into your research. So, the aim here was to reduce clutter and make things clearer, especially for new users. Okay, now we really need to talk about the AI adaptations we've made for this agentic Life OS. The AI agent hub. This is probably the change I'm most excited about. We've added an agent hub for storing agent instructions. Not only agent instructions, but a skills database and knowledge bases that are specifically designed for agents to read. It's the perfect place to plug in something like my agent OS template and take your setup to the next level. But, there is however a light version of my

13:54agent OS. This is the thing that you would set as your personal instructions in here. You would go to personalize and then select the global instructions. Just to show you what what my full agent OS version looks like. There's a specialist mode picker, a ton of advanced modes, uh the sub agents that serve it, and a context map of my information and memory. So, what we have in the agentic life OS is a light version of this. Basically, it means you would set this as your personal agent instructions. The mode picker would then choose from the sub agents that you've created, and it would pick from the

14:30specialist agents database. And then it's got some global rules, and the really cool bit is we've pre-formatted the master database table with every single database that exists in this template. There are a lot, and it means that it will always put information and find information in the right place. Oh my goodness, we've saved you so much pain. So, this is a great new advantage

14:53in the system. So, working down the agent and skills hub, you have the personal agent instructions that you would set as your instructions unless you've got agent OS or wanted to upgrade to agent OS. You then have agent knowledge bases. Now, this is essentially a place where you can create a dedicated knowledge base database, and then it would be something that would serve an agent. What that looks like is a set of entries which specify when to use it, the type of content that it is, and it means that an agent can search through that knowledge base and use the information. For example, in mine, I have a wealth

15:30entrepreneurship knowledge base that's full of great frameworks and ideas for building wealth. Or how about a YouTube content creation knowledge base? This is filled with frameworks, strategies, and approaches that can be used to create better videos. And they look a little bit like this. The agent reads them. It's really really cool. So, you would be able to build that here. And then finally, we've got probably the most useful section, an agent instruction and skill section. You've got a database for adding specialist sub-agent instructions. I've given you inside the template a meta agent for prompt engineering. This will help you write your own uh agent instructions. And then a skills

16:09and SOP library. This is where you could create specific skills for singular tasks and then point your agent at them. So, for example, a client and consulting call, this will process client assessment calls and turn them into output. So, if you wanted to turn these into skills, you click up here. You go down to use with AI, and you select use as AI skill, and you'll see that it becomes an AI skill. It's also great to note, there's also a new option in Notion to create skills that become AI meeting note instructions. So, you could have this specifically as an AI meeting note instruction. And that would mean

16:49that this would be available in every AI meeting note template you use. Amazing. Well done, Notion. We really needed that. So, that's the new agent and skills hub. Let me know in the comments, are you using Notion personal agent? Have you graduated to using Notion custom agents on credit? And how do you feel about it? It would be great to hear from you. And uh yeah, I think this though, for most personal use cases, is the best way to get great value from AI

17:13without spending a fortune on credits. So, that's what makes this template agentic. Your second brain isn't just storing your notes anymore. It's actually connected [music] to the AI tools that help you think, plan, and work. I'll come back to that in a moment because I've completely changed how I manage my AI notes taking now, and that is why we have a new meeting notes dedicated area because AI meeting notes in Notion are the most valuable thing in

17:41my system. Okay, in my original Notion Life OS, [music] we have a knowledge base. And in that knowledge base, we have a place to capture notes, including meeting notes, and a place to capture references. These would be external information that's been pulled in. This is from Tiago Forte's website on the PARA method, for example. And then I used to have a notebooks thing, which is kind of just like a filtering system, which I think never worked really. And then a topic and resources, and these are really kind of filtered packages. All they do is you relate specific notes to them, and it helps you see things. Now, I don't think

18:19that this was a very clever approach. So, we've changed this up, and it's all due to AI meeting notes. So, if we go back to the agentic Life OS, what we now have is this. In knowledge base, we can have a tag system. It simply means if you relate a note with a tag, such as business strategies, you would then see under business strategies two references, and they would be visible. So, it's just a searchable view. What this means is that as you gather knowledge, if you want to focus on what do I know about YouTubing, you can look via the tag, or you can give the tag to your AI to

18:58search using it. It's really, really effective. And what happens here really is this just becomes the place where we're capturing those external bits of knowledge. What I think you should be doing with AI meeting notes is saving them in a single place. This then becomes the location where you can quickly go, you can start a new meeting. Let's call it that, for example, that'll look better. This automation will set it up with a template and you'll see something like this. It creates the new meeting. You've got the option to select your summary from those skills and then you can start transcribing and the meeting

19:39note will transcribe what you're saying. You can also make your own notes in there. This means that you have a dedicated location for everything you talk about and then you could start automating AI processes to draw out tasks and put them into the tasks database. You can automate a set of instructions in here which just says go and do this once it's happened or probably more usefully, you can just have quick commands like wrap up and it would do the action that you've set in

20:09your skills, for example. Really cool. So, let's stop that. You can see what an AI meeting notes does if you're new to it. This is like using something like Granola or the Plaud app, any of those Zoom summaries, but what's great is it's all within your system. It's organized and tagged as you need it to be and you can get your agent to do that for you. So, it just means you end up with a much more automated and consolidated context to inform how you work. It's Seriously, everyone should be doing this and I really think that Notion's meeting notes system is one of the best. So, that's meeting notes and

20:44universal tags. I mentioned earlier about time tracking and we have a new time tracking system in here. It's been around for a little while, but it's been refined. And what this looks like is you're able to track working sessions. Now, the reason we've done this, we have a timesheets database, is that it allows us to do granular tracking and start-stop tracking on tasks. Let me show you what that looks like. If we go into action, and let's say that we're working, say, in a project of a product build. I go into the product build

21:18section, and I want to start a new task. Here is that new task. In here, there is a view of the timesheet. If I click new time tracking session, it creates a new working session in that timesheet database and begins account. Now, we'll let this run for a moment, but we can see it's related to a project. So, if we go into the project, what you'll see in that project is there is also, under reports, a total time tracked report. Because the working session is linked to the task, and the task is linked to the project, you get reports at all levels. So, if we go back to the task, we can see there's

21:57a session in progress on this task. It's being counted on the work session. If I then end work, the duration is set as 1 minute. In reports on the task, we see that 1 minute is recorded. And in the project, we also see that 1 minute is recorded. This is going to allow you to be able to not only track across projects for clients or tasks that you're working on, but it also means on those tasks, you can stop for a pee break and come back and start recording again, and it all

22:29adds up. Fantastic. So, if you're using Life OS and you want to use time tracking, you just do it at the task level, and everything works. What's more, tasks can also be related to your goal setting process. So, if we go back here, and let's say that you're working on hitting a goal of building a house, you're able to set milestones as tasks

22:52within here. Like researching building materials, and you'll see that that comes up in that view, too. Love it. We should probably go and stop this. There you go. A minute on each session, two minutes tracked on the project. So, since many of you wanted to track your time, it's often linked to the fact that you also have clients and contacts. So, if we go into contacts, you'll see we now have organizations and people. And this means that you can create a person in the system and link them to an organization. It was a problem in the old system. It just means that you can have organizations and

23:31people and they relate to each other so you could have individual contacts within the organization. Thanks for the feedback on that, whoever did it. It was a long time ago. And there you go. There is a full list of everything in the template. You can manage workouts and plan meals in the system if you want to.

23:47Quite proud of that one. Uh rather nice. We also, of course, have an archive section where anything from key areas can be archived and hidden. So, you keep it clean and all the classics that have been developed over the years on Better Creating. A weekly review. This allows you to look at your key systems, see that something is due for review, look at it, update it, and then mark it as reviewed and it's filtered back out of the system. Really useful little tool. There's loads of training on the channel and within the template if you want to use this. In fact, there is a template [snorts] guide

24:21right here which, if we click it, you see a full guide on it including all of the onboarding videos that you'll need to get set up. Now, of course, this is the slightly older version, but all of the principles of getting started are the same and you'll find that it works identically. It's just that the front page looks a little different and it's a little easier and more refined. So, that's the updated LifeOS. Don't forget that original onboarding series is available. This is an investment of learning and time if you're new, but trust me, once you get it working, it 10x's your output and takes stuff off

24:53your brain in a way that just makes life so much easier. And alongside those template guides, using agent to help you understand it just makes this stuff so much easier. We've seen such a better uptake and kind of success rate of users of our large templates since Notion Personal Agent was released. So, budget in a business plan, link below to get signed up. Okay, before you go, building a system like this is one thing, but Notion isn't the only option. And I'm increasingly loving the power of Claude code and Coda work in conjunction with

25:25something like this to get my work done. So, you need to go and watch this video [music] next on my second channel, Systems Made Better. It's been an absolute game-changer for me and loads of people. And [music] no, as a YouTuber, I don't use that word lightly. Hit subscribe if you're not, and I'll

25:41see you on the next one. Bye.